Tall Tree Games Candy Shop leaves our sweet tooth wanting more

Tall Tree Games, developers of popular games Garden World and Fish World, have just released a brand new game titled Candy Shop. While this game aims for the over-the-top cuteness that other baking and cooking games boast, Candy Shop sort of misses the mark.

When you first log in, you will not be greeted with a tutorial. Only a simple bobbing arrow prompts you to click on the electric mixer to collect and display your finished Chocolate Squares. After that, there is nothing to help guide you into the gameplay. If you are familiar with other baking games such as Cupcake Corner, Cafe Life or Cafe World, this will all be very easy to understand. However, if I were new to the genre of baking games I would be completely lost on what to do next.

Candy Shop uses the same exact game mechanics as our favorites, Chocolatier, Baking Life, and Cafe Life. Your candy machines allow you to make different recipes that unlock as you level up. Making a recipe involves clicking the machine several times to progress your candy to the stage where it needs to wait a set amount of time until it is ready. After ready, the candy must be clicked on to move it to a display before it spoils. On display, your candy sells to the patrons who visit your store. The goal of the game is to level up, make money, and decorate your candy shop.

Graphically, there is nothing wrong with Candy Shop. They opted to go with a more realistic looking avatar than the cartoony Baking Life, which kind of makes it them clash with the bubbly cutesy interior graphics. The player avatar isn't customizable at all, and doesn't move around the shop as far as we could tell. The interface is rather standard, with nothing particularly hard to understand or innovative. Socially, Candy Shop isn't doing anything new. Players have neighbors to visit, can share their candy with people on their wall, and can send gifts.

While Candy Shop appears to be doing everything right, we don't see anything unique or innovative in this game. Literally everything about the game is being done in other games, and most often is done better elsewhere. There is no element of user creativity beyond simple decoration (for example, the Cupcake Creator in Baking Life), the core game loop is just more of the same. While some might say we're being a little rough on this game, this particular developer has two other games under its belt that saw huge early growth followed by massive declines. We would have hoped that Tall Tree would be more comfortable with bringing something new and exciting to the Facebook games space.

To conclude, if you're looking for yet another baking/cooking game to add to your arsenal, give Candy Shop a go. However, a lack of anything innovative has Candy Shop leaving us desiring more than it can offer.